Thank you very much

Whenever I learned this topic I thought like Abarbanel, whom the Rabbi brought among the sources, and seemingly it’s simple. For example, if someone is deceived into thinking that the purpose of life is to eat a cracker with wine, then he’s screwed. Maybe it’s not his fault that they fooled him, but in the end he invests his whole life in meaningless things (or commits crimes). And if a person puts his hand in the fire unintentionally, it will still burn, even though he has done no wrong.
All the Raavad disagrees about is a mistake in understanding the plain meaning of the verses, where in the Raavad’s view he is not a heretic and will receive the World to Come, while Maimonides thinks it is severe enough to be called a heretic (which is why he brought it in that chapter of the Guide). But a person who is completely mistaken and doesn’t believe in the Torah—even the Raavad agreed that he is a heretic, and it’s irrelevant whether he is at fault.
Of course, the Rabbi will argue that then the Holy One, blessed be He, is not moral, but according to Maimonides karet is non-existence and not necessarily punishment, so the difficulty isn’t so great (and Nachmanides’ interpretation of his words is forced). Besides, by the same token one could argue that it isn’t moral that a person gets burned in a fire by accident up above.
Why doesn’t the Rabbi accept this?
Thank you very much!!

I haven’t gone through the sources, so I can’t say what I think about them. Briefly, I’ll say that in my opinion there is no punishment for what happens under coercion. Obviously, if a person does not believe, then he does not believe, and of course he also will not receive reward for that. Coercion is not like one who acted.

According to Maimonides, existence is not automatic. The intellect is only a potential for attaining intelligibles and for existence after the death of the body. Through attainment, a person attains the existence of the intellect; it’s not that he harms his soul because he suddenly became a heretic.
In other words, knowledge of the truth is the key to the intellect’s persistence.
His words are based on an interpretation of Alexander of Aphrodisias, which is itself an interpretation of Aristotle’s De Anima. Such existence is very vague.
Therefore, a person who did not attain the intelligibles, that is, truths—it does not depend on whether he erred or simply did not engage in this in the first place.

There are also Platonic approaches where it likewise makes no difference whether he erred or not. For example, in the dialogue Phaedo, it is mentioned that a person who lived according to bodily desires and sought pleasures—his soul strives to return to the world and not separate from the body, and therefore it will be reincarnated again and will not reach its place.
To understand why they held this way, one has to understand in depth the philosophical systems by which they were influenced. These approaches are much less accepted today, even among the other religions that were also influenced by them. Though traces of them remain here and there (also among secular thinkers).
According to the classic approach, in which a person is judged, there is certainly room to examine whether he denied, rebelled, or genuinely made a mistake and is therefore coerced.

Interesting, but I don’t think this is דווקא connected to the philosophical system on which Maimonides based himself, but rather to the simple idea that just as putting one’s hand into a fire causes physical harm whether you intended it or not, so too a bad deed or bad thought causes spiritual harm (and that itself is the reward and punishment).
And therefore the dispute between Maimonides and the Raavad is not necessarily about someone who errs in his analysis, but a dispute over how terrible corporealizing God is.

It makes no difference whether a person is coerced or not,
reward and punishment are determined by the actual deeds.
Even if from an educational standpoint people try to say that motives are more important, in practice what determines things is the action.

According to The Last Decisor, one receives reward for a mere monkey-like act.

But the conception on which Maimonides relied leads to that. If you believe there is judgment above, then of course the intention behind things is more important, and certainly a person who was led astray should not be found liable.
Also in Jewish law we see that someone coerced and someone who errs unintentionally are exempt (though one who errs unintentionally needs atonement).

If the conception is more “scientific,” and man is not the center and everything operates in a deterministic way, then it makes no difference whether a person acted unintentionally or not. Maimonides’ view sees reality as all fixed by physical and metaphysical laws as interpreted by Aristotle’s commentators. Therefore there is no judgment above and there is not really reward and punishment, but rather consequences of choices in the world.
There too there is room for a person who is coerced or errs unintentionally. But that is more in actions and less in the attainment of intelligibles. (And in fact we see in the Sages that someone coerced and someone who errs unintentionally are exempt.)
Simply put, a person who did not attain the intelligibles and did not acquire wisdom—his intellect does not unite with the Active Intellect, and therefore he has no persistence. The commandments do not guarantee unification with the Active Intellect at all; rather, they provide a framework that makes it easier. Whether by maintaining order in society or by distancing a person from things liable to cause him not to engage in intelligibles.
Likewise, a person who committed a transgression does not necessarily fail to attain the intelligibles. In fact, according to Maimonides, someone like Aristotle attained far more than any person and did not keep the commandments (and according to his view there is really no metaphysical difference between Jew and gentile, except that the Jews chose to sanctify the intellect and they have a Torah that directs them toward that).
This persistence too is vague, and it is not at all clear whether it is individual. If two people acquired a certain wisdom, what remains is that same wisdom, not those same people.

Maimonides too, in several places, is not entirely certain of this approach, and in one place in the Mishneh Torah he holds that the soul is eternal in every case and cannot cease to exist. In fact, this dispute is between the commentators on Alexander of Aphrodisias and Themistius, who interprets Aristotle as saying that the passive intellect is a reduced model of the Active Intellect and has independent existence.
In the overwhelming majority of places Maimonides seems to follow Alexander’s commentators. But on rare occasions one can see other quotations.
According to Maimonides, corporealization is terrible because such a person follows falsehood and does not grasp the truth. That is, such a person does not attain the intelligibles.

And note that we are also talking about a conclusion a person reaches regardless of how he labels it. Words are not the main thing; they are only identifiers through which one can assign names to things. In practice, a person can say that he believes or holds something, while in fact he has reached a different conclusion. And it is possible for a person to say that he does not, while in fact he believes in that same thing (for example, “the sun shines every morning,” and “sun” is written with three letters—that is not the same sun. One is a word to which we later give meaning, and the other is a body that exists in space. In logic and in constructing formal languages this point is very important).
In fact, from what I’ve seen, most people corporealize God (according to Maimonides), even if they claim they do not. In fact, any attribution of a quality to God is corporealization, and therefore attributes should be understood by way of negation.